Mantodeology (PRAYING MANTISES) with Lohitashwa Garikipati

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I'm Ali Ward.

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Potti. I was like, I want to go.

They're so bad.

I want to do so bad. I've never been to an asmology grand Friends.

That was actually my first one. It was a lot of fun.

Yeah, oh I would have I don't know, I would have died. I mean they're all there, right, They're like the ant people and the wasp people and the you know, butterfly people.

It was honestly overwhelming. It's like when you have a big menu at a good restaurant. There's so many options we want to see you can't pick.

And Oh, first, I'll also have you say your first and last name in your pronouns. I forgot to that.

Oh yeah, of course. Yeah, my name is lohiit Gherka Patti. I go by him pronouns. Yeah, mantis is are cool.

How long have you been a bug nerd.

Yeah, that is the technical term that I tend to use. Yeah, I've been into bugs ever since I was like five or six. It's sort of been like a lifelong thing for me. I was initially really into dinosaurs and then they kind of just sort of split into other nature things and bugs are just always around, so they're really easy to observe and sort of, you know, play away with, keep his pets whatever.

Did you have a gateway bug that got you from dinosaurs to bugs in general? Was it manted or was it like tarantula or something?

Oh, it was actually funny you mentioned spiders. I'll circle back to it, but it was actually lady bugs to start off with. I actually did a science fair project on lead bug life cycles and I sort of had been collecting them outside our apartment and you know, just find them on grass. I was like, oh, they must be eating grass. Of course, most people probably listening to know that they do not eat grass, and so that

We spoke over video chat and behind him was like a baker's rack filled with tidy, white netted enclosures, each with a cherished book or two.

You can kind of see this is my room, a lot of stuff. So he Yeah, Captive observation has been really really exciting for me. I think it's a great opportunity to stay sort of connected with nature. But then you get to see all these all these things that they do that you might not normally be privy to, because I mean, most of the time it's hard to

I hadn't thought about that, about how much of the behavior you'd have to be really right place, right time to ever catch. And what about mantids in particular. I don't know if you know this about me, but I did have a pet mantis. Her name was Mirabel, and oh she loved mealworms more than anything. And this was in my thirties and like, not when I was six.

I think your story is a good example. I think they're just really charismatic. I mean, even for in sex in general. I like, it's hard for me to pick a specific thing because people always ask me this, why do you like mantas' so much? And I think there's a lot of things that they do that I think people don't really realize that they do, from mating displays

It's very exciting, like watching an apex predator take down an antelope and you're like, that's horrifying, but it's all nature. It's a circle of life. But like with a very small tiger and a maggot, I think, what do they tend to eat? Do you feed them like mealworms and crickets?

I actually I feed them cockroaches blad alatter alice cockroaches. They're great because they can't climb plastic, so it makes it really easy to deal with them for feeding. So I just tossed them in the container and they can't escape from the container that they're in because crickets jump and they make noise. So I've kind of straight away from them over time. But in the wild fantasies eat a lot of different stuff. I mean, you have species that specialize is on nectar feeding and sex in general,

People whose algorithm is not filled with macro bug photography. I don't know what your life is like, but an orchid mantis is like a Barbie pink and white insects about half the size of your thumb, and it does an uncanny impression of a jungle blossom. But unlike an orchid, they are thirsty for killing.

There's species that specialize on butterflies, so they sort of have a pretty unique hunting strategy with them. There's ants specialists, and then you have species that kind of are more generalists and the like, you know, pretty much anything that they can really grab or get their raptorial fore legs around. And some of the bigger species even eat vertebrates, So I mean they're all over the ecological chain.

I don't understand how that's possible because there's I know, there's a viral video that's gone around or of a mantis catching and starting to eat a hummingbird, which is like giant that's like, we have a sandwich is the size of a car. Why would I need that much? How do they do it?

The short answer is they're just very strong, and I think they really rely on being able to surprise their prey because mantises are strong. But I think in a straight up fight they really rely on being able to grab and lock down the insect or prey from it moving, and then just getting a couple of good bites in that can kind of subdue it for the most part, because they have to start eating it while it's alive. I don't have any venom or anything like that. So yeah,

It's interesting to think of a mant to being like, Okay, I'm stuffed, I'll move on. But then they don't know leftovers though, right they don't do leftovers.

No, usually not. Mantises are pretty I'll say that they're picky. They really like the juicy bits of stuff, so they tend to leave little If it's like very like the ends of insect legs or wings, they really don't like those, so that the start them It's really funny because when you watch them eat, like a fly or something. You'll see them eat. They get to the wings and they like take a couple of bites, They're like, h nah,

Legs just like pizza crusts, like.

Every Yeah, only the finest for them. They only like the finest morsels of food.

How many mantids do you have? Do you keep?

Uh? Presently? I think the number is close to one hundred, and just sort of fluctuates depending on how many nymphs I end up having from eggs hatching or adults and stuff like that. So it just varies.

Well, I guess we should or I should actually established technically speaking, what is it manted.

Yeah, so there's roughly twenty five hundred currently described species. They tend up triangular heads a couple of the features of the group, or that they have a specialized cleaning brush on their fore legs. So when you see mantiss do that cat like cleaning motion, they actually have a brush there that's gathering off all the bits of dirt and stuff from things they've eaten or collected just to

I needed to know what this was called because I hoped it was like a micro scruffle or like a little facy, scratchy sketch. But according to the twenty seventeen study Manual of Praying Mantis Morphology, Nomenclature and Practices, it's called a femoral brush and it's a small patch of hair like projections on the front of the forelimb. And I googled images.

I was like, what are we.

Talking here, and under my croscopy it looks like if you had a goatee on your wrist and you used it to get croissant flakes off of your head. Ten out of ten sexy. Speaking of baby making, they.

Tend to lay uthiki, or that's what we call their egg cases. They're often foamy coverings to protect the eggs, and those can be in a variety of different shapes. There's some that look like cotton candy, there's some that look like little galls, So super variable there, and they tend to have they have asymmetrical genitalia. I don't know if people are interested in that. Tidmit that it's sort of weird for insects.

I mean, of course we always bug junk talk as to walk.

Come here, DoD junk is great, it's weird.

That's like one of the ways you can tell a male from a female, right is looking at the tip of their butt.

Mm hmm, yeah, that's it's a great way. Mantisters are what we call like sexually dimorphic, right, So males often are skinnier and they tend to have very long antennae, bigger eyes for their head size, and the females and then yeah, you can look at the end of their abdomen until really easily because the females will have a point which is their opa positor coming out the bottom, and the males just have this cup like shape but it's just modified in a different way to house the insect.

Junk is an what is a mantistick called what.

We'd call it the genitalia, But there's three main pieces or fallomere is what we call them in the mantis situation.

Yeah, no, need more info? So did me?

So?

I found the paper Functional Morphology of the Praying Mantis Male Genitalia, which starts with an absolute banger of an opening sentence. The diversity of genitalia in the animal world is difficult to overstate, indeed, and it continues to describe that mantis copulation is divided into three phases. There's opening, anchoring,

Now.

Females have a tip at the end of their abdomen, and this is their digging and their egg laying poker. It's called an ovipositor and in general, they have larger bodies and a thicker, wider abdomen. That's how you can spot them. They use that to carry all those little eggs to make more mantids or mantises. Okay, and mantis or mantid, what's the proper way.

Yeah, so this is a this is a good question. So mantids is historically correct. So mantis is as whole used to be considered one family. So they're man today within the order Dictioptera, but now Dictioptera is a super order and Mantis's order Mantodia, their own order, and Man today is still a valid family that refers to one of the twenty seven recognized currently recognized families. So if you say mantids, people usually know that you're talking about mantises.

If you're like, well, you lost me at all those words, don't worry about it. There's not going to be a quiz.

Essentially, it's just gone back and forth with this huge update in twenty nineteen, and probably people have been in a conference room crying and fighting about this but the latest is that mantises, of which there are around twenty five hundred recognized species, belong to the order Mantodia, and mantids are in a family below that. So not all mantises are mantids, but all mantids are mantises, and it's confusing. Manted is now a more narrow group than mantises, even though it.

Used to be kind of reversed.

So if you're feeling confused, you're an amazing company, even among mantodiologists. Absolutely zero yelling at me about this is going to be tolerated. Twenty five hundred species of mantises, and they range from grassy greens to pink to brown, with bodies that are spiky or leaflike. There are stick mantids with pointy heads, cobra mantises with one wide fin

Yeah, So, for the longest time, I actually wasn't even thinking about doing academic research. I mean I came into my undergrad not really sure exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to do some thing with life sciences. I just always liked mantises and keeping them as a hobby, and so in that sense, I was interested in them from a purely hobby perspective. I enjoyed like the raising new species and sort of learning about them. In that sense. And part of it also was my parents weren't really

Did you know there was a Beauheart Museum of Entomology in Davis, California? Neither die because nobody told me. But also it's not far from your grandpod's final resting place, and perhaps a field trip is in order. So all those in favor say, it's really just up to me. Okay, So the place though, seems delightful and dumb's my kind of nerds and that was.

Just fantastic and like that. Up to that point, I was like, I like it. I like it, but I hadn't done it. And then after working on that paper and going through the whole process, I was like, yeah, I could see myself doing this for a long time.

So yeah, and now mantis mantis is where where are they endemic to and are they Do they tend to be from one region or are they everywhere?

Yeah? So there are native mantis has found pretty much all over the world except Antarctica, so every major continent. So of course, like most insects, they are most diverse in the tropics, so you'll see most of the variation in morphology and species diversity there. But you know, we do have a lot of species in the US, for

That is really exciting.

For more on this, you can see Lohit's twenty twenty three paper, Observational Reports of oviposition differences in geographically disparate populations of Stagmomantis Lambara the non Consumptive Effects of Invasive Competitors, which includes photos of the European mantis and the bordered mantis with their egg cases on everything from oak leaves to dry grasses to fence posts.

Not put them anywhere in general habitat wise, are they looking for really leafy areas where they can hide behind things or do they do okay like arid but burrow dwelling or something.

Oh yeah, that's a great question. So it depends on the species, which is like a very hand wavy biology answer. It depends, right, We always hear it all the time, but it really does. Each species tends to have different types of microhabitats that they tend to like. So some species really like grassy fields, some species like more open chaparral habitat like the ground mantises and the genus little nutrio. If you're ever in the southwest US, you'll see tons

So while the largest praying mantisses my top out around five inches or thirteen centimeters, how teeny we talking? How small do they get like mantises in general? As a as full ground because I know we see nymphs coming out of thea.

How did you pronounce it?

Yeah?

Yeah, get to know, that's one of those words you see written much more than you say.

Strange word.

Means an egg container and in Greek and is an ovary and not a capsule full of tiny roaches or mantids. When they pop out of that thing like a clown car. There's so many of them in there, they just scatter, they start eating each other. It's a buffet as well as a family reunion at the same time, all in one, and so like that's really where survival, that's just where natural selection comes in. I guess right, if you can outrun your hungry siblings, then your genes move on.

There's definitely cannibalism is like, of course, the thing that mantis are super well known for. Everyone knows that mansis do the thing. Definitely a lot of the nymphs do will end up eating each other at some point, usually within the first twenty four hours, and across many many species,

Times dinner is in a live family member and it's regional cuisine, so you say, when in Rome and very hungry.

But it's sort of interesting because in the tropics you see a lot of the opposite, So there's sort of some differences. Instead of hatching all at once, like a lot of the egg cases tend to do here, you'll have egg cases that hatch a couple individuals per day, or a couple individuals every couple of weeks or something, just to sort of give the individuals time to disperse. Or you'll have siblings that are more tolerant of each other and they tend not to cannibalize. So there's some variation.

So what about when you're keeping them, do you have to be really on top of it in terms of when they hatch out, and if you are putting them into their own sort of territory.

M h yeah, usually i'll once they hatch, because they when they hatch and wriggle out and it's really cool if you've never seen it happen in person. But they basically each nim full spin a little line of silk and emerge out of the egg case and dangle down and then that's when they undergo their first molt. So they'll do it mid air, while hanging down from the string of silk. They'll molt and then they look like an actual amantis that we know, rather than an alien worm.

So the mantises kind of squirm out of these few slits in this hardened ooh fika, and then they dangle off these silk threads in a baby gang, and it looks a huge bunch of helium balloons, but upside down, and instead of balloons, they're eighty bitty light colored mandises whose skin shells still need to harden. And then they hop off their silk threads and onto a surrounding surface to go well, holy smokes, shell was crowded. Also, I'm starving for bug guts.

What do we got?

It's very cool. And then so they'll once they do their well, now they look like a mantis, but they need to slerotize, so that's when they harden their exoskeleton, right, getting ready to be able to hunt and jump and run away. And so usually what will happen is they'll kind of just sit somewhere for a couple hours while they're hardening, and then that's when they start running around like crazy. So it becomes really hard to move all

It's just instinct. I mean, it's how they've survived this long.

Yeah.

Yeah, what about other natural adaptations? Because they're so diverse, at least from a morphology perspective, can you tell me about some of the some of the weirder looking ones.

Definitely, yeah, I mean one of my favorites is definitely the genus Toxidera. It's problem most people probably haven't heard of them, but they're the Asian dragon mantis's is their common name. So they're giant, they're like six seven inches long, super elongate. They have these like really beautiful protrusions on them.

Okay, I wasn't going to interrupt to describe them, but then I looked them up.

People people, these things. They're native to Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela, and they're this modeled brownish green color and they have giant alien eyes that are much taller than they are wide.

They're butterfly specialists. So basically what they do is they'll sit under a leaf and they have these really long legs that are sort of space closely together, so they can just dangle and they almost get a full three sixty degree motion just by being able to rotate their legs. And they'll sit with their four legs held open when they see a butterfly fly by, and if the butterfly gets close enough, then the bear trap closes and they snatch it out of the air. It's very very very cool.

Yeah, do they eat the wings too? Or are they like nah?

Those Actually I think they do eat some of the wings, but I think they will also if there. It's a weird thing. It's the analogy I like to use is like if you watch a grizzly bear hunting during a salmon run, when they go for the salmon eggs, because that's what mantis is like to do. So when you see the mantis is posted up in your garden, they're going to eat all the good stuff because they know more food's gonna come. It says, you told you can.

We did have some milkweed in our garden and we had a couple of monarchs in stars on their disappeared and I'm like, I don't know who's eetnam? That's all right?

Circle, Can pantases eat monarchs? Aren't they toxic because of their host plant milkweed?

No?

I couldn't resist looking it up. And yes.

There is a twenty seventeen article titled impact of consuming toxic monarch caterpillars on adult Chinese manted mask gain and fecundity, which explained that number one mantids discard the gut tissue from monarch larvae while consuming the rest of the caterpillar. They just toss those guts right out, even though the caterpillar's body still has those cardenolides, which are these plant steroids that make a lot of birds barf when they

What about ones that look like sticks or orchids or yeah, what are some other mimics or morphs that they've got.

Yeah, there's like and mimics. Like you mentioned, there's stick mimicking species that we actually have two in the US, so if you ever go to Arizona or Texas, you can look for the unicorn mantises that are there. Each state has their own respective species, so they look just like a stick. They are modeled and have wavy legs and they look just like they'll blend in perfectly. It's

So imagine those crispy brown leaves that you crunch through and fall, but up close, one of them has legs in a mouth and a brain and an agenda. That's a dead leaf mantis.

Some species mimic the type of dead leaf that kind of hangs off a branch and falling off. There's species that mimic more generally the forest floor litter. There's species that try to mimic like a gnarled, twisted leaf that's on a branch, so lots of different variations. Really cool, they're so gorgeous.

It's so nuts when you see them and then they start walking. I wonder if it has ever really given like existential crises to animals out there where they're like that leaf just started walking. I don't know what's real.

What just happened. I saw that leaf was over there.

And then what about research that mantis entomologists meant ment ideology, mentodiologists, liken todiologists are doing, Like are there particular issues with like invasive species, per dating on local species, or are there like this one's dying out. What are manned experts worried about right now?

Yeah, that's a great question. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of mantis researchers in general, so and I think this is sort of a double edged story because it's very exciting in the sense that any new discovery about life history or ecology tends to be new because not many people have researched it, But that also means there's less

So yeah, you can buy uthiki for pest control like garden A, fod Control, and even Amazon it will sell you a full egg case for fifteen bucks, which is like eight cents per mantis. But mantodiologists are like, try to find your native ones so that invasive critters don't compete for food with locals. Okay, And in the US, the Chinese mantis again big ones up to four inches or a European mantis can be so much larger than

I love them, but but.

They do push out native Carolina mantiss I mean I've seen it in just on campus in certain patches, because they tend to be bigger and they grow faster, and so Carolina mantises end up having a tough time competing with them. And I'm sure, as you saw with your monarchs stuff, they can get eaten. And when you have an invasive mantis that's two and a half times bigger than a native species and they exist in high abundance,

If you smell the poo of an assassin, get the fuck out of there pronto. Also, mantis shit is called frass, way better sounding name than shit. I wish ours was called frass. And there's no reason why we can't start immediately.

So we do have some evidence that you know, at least the non native species do eat things or do have impacts that species don't. We just haven't done enough to sort of look at that yet.

Can I ask you some questions from listeners who had one million questions? Yeah, of course, okay, but before we ask your questions, patrons will take a quick break for sponsors who make it possible for us to donate to a charity of the ologists choosing, and this week low Heat selected the World Wildlife Fund, which collaborates with local communities to conserve the natural resources we all depend on, to tackle the threats driving climate crisis, and to protect

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Out and your to do list is growing by the minute, but unfortunately so is your headache, and now you've gone from flat out to flattened. Luckily, Panadal extra film coated tablets are boosted by caffeine and they get to work in as little as ten minutes for powerful relief. That's more than just paracetamol. That's one for Pana doll speed based on absorption data contains paracetamol.

Always read the label or leaflet.

Okay, Patron questions. If you want your question asked and names said with my mouth, you can join patrons at patreon dot com slash ologies so I can look at them and maybe pick them. And all right, let's get our spiky death forearms on some of these queries, shall we.

Let's see Erica Florey wants to know what is a collective name for a group of mantids.

Oh, I don't think that's been made yet. You can call it a monacherie. I don't know.

Fantasy's done, a mobilization of fantasy. Both excellent. I think that you get to decide. I think you just did.

Mouse Paxton parent to mantis, Henrietta the Destroyer and Palli talks, and Princess Dawson Leone the Mama to mantids Nan and Mackenzie King wants to know why do they look so wise like they definitely have secrets to the universe in that triangle head and Emily McLeod said, OMG, I had the same question. They do that head tilt that makes it look like they're thinking really hard? Are they the Scholar of bugs?

The Joyful Spitfire also wants to know are they pentive and enlightened? Are they pretty smart? Good hunters?

I like to think so. I think I would say they're a lot like cats, because they will they do likely as pointers. That's sort of on a side, but they go about hunting the same way a cat would, so you know, they see something, they sort of really tuck down, get in, get into the stocking. And then if the thing that they're hunting freaks them out, then they freak out and they have no interest in hunting anymore, just like a cat. I'm out of here. So they're

Correct, if you love cats, you will maybe like mantises, maybe love them.

And I say this as a cat person. I have two cats, but yeah, mantises I think are fairly smart. They do really pay attention to what's going on around them, and that's part of what makes it so frustrating to find them sometimes is because unlike a lot of other insects, mantises will try to change the way that they're hiding.

Have you all studied like how big their ganglia is or if they can remember things like Have there been any neurological testing of mantids.

Yeah, there has been a little bit, not for mantiss specifically, but I think when people have looked into insect brain structures and head structures, they do include mantises, and for mantises, they tend to include very commonly used species and studies like Chinese mantises or Carolina mantises. Am I understanding is that I don't think it's especially large or different than

But you might not even know they're there because they look bonkers. Asked quite bluntly, why do they look like that? Sean Hebrink wanted to know. Is aggressive mimicry the best phrase in science? And are orchidmantis is the coolest animal ever?

Let's learn.

Other folks asked about camouflage, like Sarah Rosso, Anna Stevens, Aaron Anderson, Jen Squirrel, Alvarez, Lived, Timbrini, Kathleen Regovic, Miranda Panda, Chandler Witherington, and Evan Davis, who asked what causes some to be pink aesthetic queen? They say, and Ada wanted to know why do so many mimic flowers or other insects? And that's just good camouflage that they can hunt better.

Right, Yeah, for orcidmantises though, it's aggressive mimicry, so they don't actually even need to be in flowers or even near flowers at all. They reflect UV light actually better than flowers in some cases, and so pray will just fly right to them they are the flower, and then pray just gets confused and they get eaten. So in some species it's mostly for camouflage, totally crack. In some species they take it to the next level and they use it against their prey.

That's so tricky, that's so and I wonder if they realize that they look so much like a flower, or if they're just like hunting's actually really easy for me for some reason, Like do they realize.

Stuff just comes my way? Yeah, everything just works.

Out, Everything happens for a reason. Weren't looking like a But what about Anie McAdams wants to know. Do we know at what point in history they started being referred to as praying mantids? And also with this much talk of prey. Every time I go to spell praying mantis, I want to spell it with an E, like they prey on things. Patrons Sarah King, Mish the Fish Hope, Madeline all asked essentially what religion are mantids? Who are

So the I agree it disconfusing and when I started I totally did that all the time, so I understand. But the praying mantis term actually comes from the first species that was described by Linnaeus, Mantis religios, so it's still a valid species, that's the European mantis. So if you're in any of the northern States, it's probably the

And what's in a name a lot of behavior that made people go hey, that reminds me of stuff. And according to the nineteen ninety nine textbook The Predatory Behavior of Mantids, Historical Attitudes and Contemporary Questions, centuries ago in Egypt, a mantis appears as a deity called the bird fly in the Book of the Dead, and it leads souls

Trivia on their age old reputation. So that's it. Speaking of age old, JMI, Alexander wants to know how long do you mantids live?

Great question? I hate saying this. It varies so some most species generally, So that's just a rule of thought. Most species are going to be anywhere from the six to twelve month range. Usually males are more like the six to eight to ten month range, and females up to that twelve months. And the tropics is a little

Yeah, do they go somewhere for winter or are they just okay with colder temperatures.

In places like most of the US where it does have like a normal winter, mantis is usually over winter in their egg cases, So the females will lay before winter and the eggs will just tolerate the cold, and then they hatch in spring once the conditions are favorable. Except for those unicorn mantises that I was mentioning. They're weird because they will actually sit out in the winter as nymphs, and so they get snowed on, they get under the ice in Arizona, and then when it thaws

Oh man, the next generation of manted researchers. Maybe we'll get to that.

Oh I hope.

So there you go, Susan c Leicster, Susan Lynn Ellie's weebel and mouse Paxton. That's how they survive the cold and buy that's how I mean, we don't know, and please become mentodiologists to figure out how they evolve that ability. I would like that instead of wearing coats. But here we are speaking of evolution. Colin robot And asked why the mantis shrimp shares a name. That's because the bug came first, and the shrimp is named in honor of

Oh?

Yes, direct lineages? Okay, listen, Mercier Amber can hire. First time question asker Maria wamand Justin Bowen and Hannah Gory and Cyndia b wants to know what have they evolved from and what's their current closest relative.

Mm. Not everyone's favorite group, but it's our humble cockroaches.

Thoughts, because their heads they're same mm hmm.

Yeah. So if you want to think about it like this, mantises are really elongate feline predatory roaches, because that is what they.

Are, elongate feline roaches.

I might turn some people off, but I think it's a very cool story that two insects that have a common ancestor can end up being very very different over time.

That does make so much sense because if I look at a roach and I try to think of its head as mantis like. It freaks me out less like I love all insects, but roaches like in a home or inside, like, but their heads look so like you should see that face and go oh, I righty from the garden. It's all good. And I've heard that roaches are also kind of fastidious cleaners. Is that true?

Yes, roaches actually do spend a lot of their time cleaning. I think they just get a bad rap because we do have some pest roach species and understandably so, pest roaches are also not a fan of Yes, but you know, most roaches do what most animals do in the wild is just just go about their business. They try to take care of themselves. And roaches like Mantus's do clean. Tend to clean a lot just to stay clean and

So cockroaches are cleaner than your sink that attracted them, and they're probably talking shit about you on their podcasts.

So maternal care is something that is not studied will mantis is at all. We do know that many species engage in it. It's not the majority, certainly, but a fair number due and it seems to evolve multiple times across multiple groups, which is a great opportunity to study how maternal care evolves because usually it tends to be an all or nothing sort of situation in most groups, where most of the members do it and you know some don't or none do at all, but not the

Oh so sweet though she just hangs out for a bit.

Yeah, pretty good parenting. I mean that I've had species that they are so unwilling to be parted from the eggs that they'll you know, threat display and try to strike back up my hand when I go to try to try to remove the eggs for incubation. And I got to the point where I was like, well, this is a cool piece of natural history. So I just tend to leave the eggs with the mom now and let them just do their thing. It's been really cool.

And then I guess that brings us though to sexual cannibalism, as Derek asked about, is it increased in captivity? Can you tell us a little bit about the romance of mantis.

Oh man, Yeah, there's a lot to talk about that. Some species love displaying for the females. The males have these super eloquent displays, you know, a lot like our peacock jumping spiders that everyone loves. They'll flash their wings, they'll wave their forelegs around. They often have bright colors to show off to the female, and a lot of that's just to sort of say, hey, you know, I'm interested in mating, I'm not here to like compete with

His thing by that low heat means they will bone. Also, Derek wasn't the only little freak who asked about this, so did patrons Margot Lewis, Nicole Kleiman, Ashley Rocket, Laura Grigorous of tomsk Devour of Pop Tart's Ficture of Many Battles, Kathleen Regovich o Work, Derek Allen so we lit In, Danielle Fidelia, and Lisa Werman also wanted to know about sexual cannibalism in Manton's.

At least in captivity. Sexual cannibalism does happen. Still, it's very rare in general. I would say it's maybe like one in ten one in fifteen mating events.

If she likes it, they'll go ahead and go for it, But only like one in fifteen encounters is potentially like not second datetill.

Yeah. Yeah. Usually the female is that she really doesn't like the male. She'll just kind of walk away unless he can kind of bother her. Then she'll kind of get fed up with him sometimes, So there's a lot of female choice in some cases where the female's like, I really don't want to mate right now, and you keep bothering me, she will just eat him because she's like, you're not leave me alone, fuckle me. I've definitely had

Do they ever then sort of pretend to be receptive just out of because they're hungry?

Oh yeah, So this is something that I don't know if it's one hundred percent the reason, if it's just because the female wants to mate with more males. But I've had females that I've made it sometimes even a couple times, and they'll still be releasing pheromones, and it's usually when they are not completely full yet because they

Oh that's rough out there, man, But our invasive mantisays making it rougher. Patrons Susie k Emily g Becky, the Seagrass Scientist, Robin Coohan, first time question asker, Valerie and Rebecca Girling, the Joyful Spitfire, Peyton Henderson, Sam Wise and Tiger Udy had a question about invasive species, with Robin wondering how worried to be, Becky asking how mad to be?

My questions are, is that okay? Is that doing anything crazy with the population? Is it helping or hurting? Or should I be buying a kit for my adult self right now?

I would say most likely with those kids, you're probably going to be eating Chinese mantises, And in that situation, it probably doesn't matter anyway, because they're not native and they tend to be so abundant that even removing a couple dozen egg cases from some fields won't even make a dent. So I would say, go for it, live your best mantis keeping life.

And do they have people that are kind of going out and harvesting those egg cases or those are captive?

Usually for the Chinese mantises, they tend to just collect them outside because they just tend to be so frequent and abundant. Which it's sort of a question our lab has been having recently is what is the population genetics like for the Chinese mantises here? Just because where the egg cases probably got moved around from all over the place, and you know, they end up in places like California, not that they tend to persist there just because it's drier,

Let's say that you don't buy an egg case and you just want to bring all the mantises to the yard. What are we talking habitat wise? Ideally asked Hollybrinkle, Amber Pineda, Rube, pepita, bugs or rad Shannon Amioit, Colin Robottom and first time question asker and as tabula native Val Vanderlip. Also Carly wants to know first time question asker, how can I attract mantids to my yard?

I live in Olympia, Washington. So do you just buy some and puts them out there? Or is there to attract?

I would say if it's not a species that's native, I would recommend not just buying and releasing them totally to keep them mis bets if you want just on principle.

But what if you want to send a message to wild mantiss that your general area is just a chill place to hang out of doors.

Yeah. So mantus is really like garb gardens or green spaces that have a lot of foliage and insect succession. So because they start off so so small and they end up so much bigger, they need to have insect prey that can grow with them, and so they're a

Oh okay, and that just would benefit all kinds of pollinators as well.

Yeah right, amazing, good for everyone.

Good for everyone. And I know Zercees Society is great for telling people what to plant in like different zones. I think they might recommend different seed mixes too, which is pretty cool. It's true.

And I'll link to Zercees dot Org on my website because you deserve some beautiful wildflowers and so do all the tiny strangers that you will be friends with. Now, speaking of beauty, can mandus's see you very well now?

Are just for show. Alyssa Melissa, first time question asker wants to know if you've seen the studies, more importantly, the pictures where they wore three D glasses. How crazy is their visual system? Those eyes hold secrets.

Yeah, mantis's are amazing in terms of their vision. I mean, they're the only insect that we know for sure hystereoscopic.

Vision, so do we That just means that two images at slightly different angles help perceive in three D, and swaying back and forth helps them.

So they can get depth just by motion parallax. So when they're doing that side to side motion that you see them do sometimes sometimes it could be for just for camouflage, but usually when they're sitting still and doing it, it's for gauging depth and that really lets them, you know, be the amazing hunters they are because and some of the species are even able to use that to just catch stuff on the wings, so fly flying by snap it out of the air. I got it.

I got it, so instead of having to stock an ambush, it's just like that kind of precision to catch it.

Yeah, but Zombat Nin and Jason Ganley wanted to know what is the small black dot on their eyes and I look this up. It's called a pseudo pupil, and it's not a structure so much, but it's a spot where the almetidia, those honeycomb looking compound eye structures, are absorbing the light more. And they can have up to ten thousand of those little things. So the pseudo pupil

Can you tell us a little bit about how they have like essentially nails like in a two by four for arms.

Yeah, and those raptorial fore legs are really powerful tools. So those spikes are really good at just trapping prey. And a lot of species. Between the species, a'll have differences in the shape and the count and the texture of those spines. So some species really have flat spines that are not like they're not really spines anymore. They're just flat little bulbs almost that look like and they really use it to just crush the prey that they grab.

Oh my god.

They don't actually grab their prey. They just straight up spirit which is really metal.

So as it flicks its spiked four limbs forward at one twentieth of a second, which Animal Planet told me is twice as fast as you can blink your eyes, the spikes on the femur gouge into the prey and then other spikes on the tibia clamp it down, and then they pull their limbs back in to start eating

So, yeah, there's a ton of variation. It's really incredible how many ways the same leg and the same sort of tools can be used to like do different things.

Man, that is metal. It's funny. Right as you were saying that too, I glanced at a question from It's Just Sarah that asked does eating the male's head serve a purpose? Or is it just metal as fuck? So I don't know. Do they eat the head or do they leave the head like a pizza crust.

Oh, if they eat the head, that's just the appetizer. They're gonna get to the rest eventually.

Oh right, okay, okay, they eat the head first.

Yeah, so you wanted to know specifically about not saving the head for dessert but going straight to it like cake for breakfast patrons. Deborah Gray, Matt Thompson, It's just Sarah, Alison gassek and Ak also Ali b and Pure and fred berg Bjorn wrote, I've heard that the female eats the male's head, but is that the only part? Why not eat the whole thing? Seems like a waste of good eaten?

So when so, again, it does happen pretty rarely. That usually what will happen is when they eat the male's head. That causes the male to sort of just lock in because normally the males, you know, they want to mate and then find another female and then find another female, just try to keep mating as many females as they can.

Welcome to f Boy Island.

But some females just instead of that, they're like, well, just give me all the sperm and then I won't have to mate with more males and I can just deposit a nice big egg case right now.

So she will eat his head to drain his goat ads and then grow his babies, and that is what I like to call partnership.

So then just eat the head and also helps because she needs the energy those making those egg cases takes a lot out of her. I mean they're laying like one hundred plus eggs in some cases, so that's a lot to carry around. And maybe so very poignant that we're talking about this on Mother's Day for all the moms out there. Don't let anyone shave you for eating food. So mantis will do what they need to do, so you should too.

If I were a grabed mantis, I would roll up on so many corn dogs there would be a global shortage of corn dogs, so many babies that made out of corn dogs. Have you birthed a baby listening to this? You made that thing out of cereal and nectarines and chicken nuggets? Good job? Are they laying those like one once a season or like one once a week?

Oh, it's for some species it's every week. Every week they're laying forty to sixty eggs. Some species go for the all eggs in one basket strategy, like the Chinese mantises, and they'll do like two hundred and one egg mass and they'll usually lay one of those like every month or so. So it just depends.

Yeah, and then what is that egg mess made of because it's like the ones that I've seen. I think they're probably Chinese manch just this but it's like rock hard, but it looks like like foam, like insolation foam. Erica Flory and first time question askers Francesca Hernanda Singer and Piper Warnick and Helios had egg questions and in spicy Natives words, why do the uhikahs look so weird? Also, how does one pronounce uhika? Okay, so it's uh thiki according to low Heat.

Now we know like if you were locked out of the house and then you found your higher key under a rock, you'd be like ooh ooh thiki.

Sure mm hmm.

Yeah. So we haven't done a lot of examination into the differences in the structures between some of the egg cases. So we generally know that there's a protein called oval bumin that's used to sort of shape it, and along with other proteins and compounds. How they actually are able to make it is always been sort of a mystery to me. Because they have these serce at the end of their abdomen that they use to sort of feel the shape.

Circe are like butt fingers, and I love them, no, cap.

Oh dad, But it's really like three D printing, and they're making this without looking at it. So if you imagine trying to mold like a vase without looking at it and then stuff it in a regular pattern with eggs and then steal it up on a stick, Oh my god. It's really a cool piece of bioengineering. And there's a lot of complicated structures that have to sort

Okay, so these things are generally about the size of a quarter, but some might be elongated and look kind of like a fossilized caterpillar with ridges, or depending on the species, they might look more globular, kind of like a small oak gall And if you look really closely, you can see ridging in them, kind of like they were pipetted out in waves of maternal contractions before they stiffened into their hard case. So think of like a really small three D printed dinner roll gorilla glued to.

A fence or a branch. How do they make the glue that canher something for so long, Like is that being studied at all?

I don't think anyone's looking into that unfortunately. So what's sort of what I was saying earlier. It's it's like really exciting because there's all this stuff that's untapped, and like I mean, as you see, like there's so many interesting things that you could like look at if if someone wanted to. There's just opportunities everywhere. So and then someone should do that and tell me because I want to know.

Yes, you're like, shoot me an oe, Yeah, Sean Verbridge want to know how does their hearing work? And why can they only hear ultrasound? Is that true?

Yes? So for those of you who don't know, mantuses have a cyclopean ear. So what that means is they have one singular ear drum. Not all the species have it. There's actually an entire group that's called the deaf mantises in Central and South America. But the mantiss that do have ears have one, and it's located between their middle and hind walking legs, so not those big reptorial legs,

It for now, we don't know one ear and it's in their crotch. Even if you lifted weights every day of your life, you cannot beat that bod. Why try now? Sean Furbridge, Danielle Suche, Alina Litten, they all had hearing questions. That's so thrilling to think that it's used for something that we just have no clue about.

Weird, love it super weird? Yeah?

What about Tony ben Venudi wants to know? Why do I see them sway or dance back and forth?

Oh yeah, so that's going to be their emotion parallax. So when they're gauging the depth or the distance to something. You'll see them do this in the forward and backward motion when they're stalking prey, especially again, that's just to gauge the distance. You'll see them definitely do it before they jump. So if you see a mantis hanging off a stick or at the edge of a sidewalk or something and it's really wave in back and forth, it might be thinking about jumping up to you because you're

So patrons, helios and Muni pesnane, that's why they're swaying. And as for dancing, first time question asker McCalla, Maystrick and Fedge who asked, why can't we hear the music? They're swaying too, postulating that it feels like R and B, but maybe not. They're just on that dance floor. They're moving their dang bodies and they're swiveling their heads to leer it prey just like old school creeps at a

I love cats, but I gotta I gotta say it's the mantis. Yeah. Yeah, they take some shockingly. And I say this as someone who's seen a lot of this, like it still shocks me that they take stuff as big as frogs and snakes and stuff.

So, yeah, well this is this is a little bit timely. But Rye of the Tiger wanted to know, walking alone in the woods, would you rather run into a bear or a bear sized mantis?

Oh? My god, the bear?

Really?

Oh yeah, there's a bear sized mantis that would just try to eat me, there's no question about it.

Also winged right, so you can't outrun that.

And then at that point's too later. So I would take the bear.

Yeah, take the bear. Take the bear. What about for you? Rive the Tiger also wants to know if you could mutate and take one trait of mantids for yourself, what supermanted power would you choose.

Oh hmm, that's a really good question. I would take color changing. Pardon me, So mantises are able to color match, and not every species can do this, but a lot of them can. So they're able to change color within an in star or through in stars to match the background that they're hunting on. I think that'd be pretty cool.

Oh my god, I didn't know that they could do that. I mean, what can't they do is the question?

Yeah, taxes mostly.

But patron Charlotte Parkinson asked, I feel they would suit a top hat, maybe a monocle. Thoughts Charlotte, affirmative. Now what about the rest of their public image? Some of you had pop culture questions, such as Natalie Brissou, Celia Sanislo, Paulina Krasinska, and Nicole Kleman.

For example, what about Tyra Pieria and a few others to know what's the most accurate screen depiction of a manted film or TV? Someone else asked about a bug's life in Manny.

Any thoughts, Oh, okay, love Manny. He's great. I think he would just eat his mate, even though you know, usually femalechanism, but he's a mantis. So as far as accurate portrayal, I would say there's a documentary sort of early two thousands on Discovery Channel that was quite good. I think a lot of documentaries tend to very dramaticize mantis's and definitely they make up the scenes like they put the insects together in ways that they normally wouldn't.

Be with lightning, fast reflexes, it nabs a meal and a blink of an eye, then casually devours its victim while it is still alive. From humid tropics to arid deserts to your own backyard, the praying Mattis makes its presence known. It's alien like features have made it feared, revered and misunderstood.

And that was from two thousand and one a program called Alien Insects. It's campy, but it's informative and it's realistic, but not all nature films are.

And I can sort of tell us someone who's like seeing mantis behavior before that, you know, the mantises like normally wouldn't be in that position, or they wouldn't behave that way unless they were stressed or something like that.

Just keeping them inside stressed them out. Patron Greg Wallach asked do they like us? And others including Ellie's Weebel, Susan's Lester and Lynn, Margo Lewis and Felix, as well as Tiana Floria and twenty three Schedoo asked a ton of people wanted to know about captivity the ethics of it. Zoey Lytton said, ore, manton's a good pet if you are enchanted by mantus'es. Tell us a little bit about becoming roommates with some.

The great roommates quiet clean, generally respectful, though I do get the odd threat display from that from time to time. Mantis is, I think, are a great pets in general, just because they take up the little space and the setup for them is very It can be as cheap or as expensive as you want to make it. You can keep them in anything from like a small cup with sticks to this really nice plant in a bavarium.

Again, all amazing advice for relationships partnerships. Also, you know, you mentioned something about native versus non native too. Robin Cohen wanted to know how worried do you think we should be about non native versus native mantids in the US.

That's a great question. So the non native species, unfortunately just tend to be bigger than the native species wherever they end up being. I would say at this point, just because most of the non native species have been here for so long, there's not really much we can do unless there's a whole concerted effort to really go out find the eggs, pull them up, to actually get rid of them. I would say, if you find one outside, you could totally keep it as a pet because they're

Mantises. They're here and you might as well love them forever. So they don't eat your dog. That's flim flam.

They can't do that. Don't spread that. Let's bust some other lives while we're here.

Mad Madam, Mim, Holly Coool, Keegan Newman, Jeffrey Vanderlib and first time question asker Mary Leo asked in their words, I grew up thinking praying mantessses were endangered and only recently discovered they are not, and actually never were on the endangered species species list? Where did that myth come from?

Are you aware of it?

Yes? I have heard this, actually definitely. People have asked me this because I keep mantuss so they're like, oh, are any of them dangered. I think a lot of it comes from mantus is just being scarce to find. Of all the insects, I think they tend to be of the least commonly observed unless you're specifically going out to look for them. And that's of course because of how they are. They like to be reclusive, they like to hide, they want to stay away from the open

Species are in the minority and most of the time they're not gone, they're just hiding from you and their lunch.

So one of the major issues that mantuses have had here, and this kind of is why people think we have so few in the United States, is we thought that mantus's we're not very diverse here. So just if you go back ten years, we rewind the taxonomic clock, there was only about fourteen species actually described in the US. But basically what happened in the past decade is this has been huge revival to sort of look at old

Okay, so that's their future, but what about their past? First time question asker Ulia Veranos wonders were they ever huge and hairy? And Kelly Toler wanted to know where they're truly giant mantis back in the days of the dinosaurs or is that a myth?

Oh?

So it's weird because we actually haven't found giant mantis fossils yet. I will say it's not that they couldn't exist. The part of the problem is the mantises that tend to get preserved from the dinosaur eras in amber and stuff like that. Tend to be bark mantis species, but bark mimicry has evolved multiple times across the.

Group, and with so many mantis is evolving to look like tree bark, which is genius. A fossilized mantis or one trapped in amber looks like some existing species, because looking like a dead leaf, that's just good business.

So it's a big shrug because.

It could represent a revolution of that group, it could represent a really old group. And if we don't have these really giant mantises that we sometimes see here like that size or bigger preserved, we don't know if they existed or not. So that's part of the challenge.

Yeah, so should you construct a time machine to spy on giant ancient mantids. You may be disappointed. You could have just revisited your high school senior year trip to the water slides instead, But don't be sad. Everyone probably peas in those anyway.

It's a bummer. What about Jennifer R. I want to know what praise on a praying mantis? Does anyone eat one of them?

Yeah? Definitely, birds, other mantis, spiders, Jumping spiders surprisingly are quite good at catching really big mantises. So it's weird to think about because I mean, of course they will lead like a small nym or something, but just because big mantises tend to be i'll say, more bold, and because they tend to be looking forward about their area versus jumping spiders. They you know, they'll be looking down from a perch or something. They can get ambush really easy.

Man, it's a battle out there. Okay. Worst thing about mantis is worst thing about keeping them, worst thing about being a mantis researcher and friend to mantis' that's tough.

Yeah, so being the lorax of the mantis is kind of hard. I'm growing the mustache. It's been challenging because I think so as we were talking about, because not a lot of work has been done and there's so a few people working on them actively it's been hard to find places that will let me continue to work on them, and to no fault of any advisor, I

I'm so surprised that being a mantis researcher isn't like being a marine biologist, Like I can't believe people do descrubbing, like, you know what. I want to be a mantis researcher because they're so cool, you know what I mean. I find them to be like the dolphins of the insect world. They're mysterious. What are they doing? They look weird. You'd think everyone would just be rushing straight to the mantis sign up desk.

I would love it if people do it. In ten fifteen years, if I'm my own lab, you know, I would hope people do that. I totally agree. I mean, I think they're they're definitely calling them the charismatic microfauna.

And if someone wants to become praying Manta's parent, should they reach out to anywhere in particular? Is there a list of like reputable breeder is there anything like that or or is it just like if you see one out in the wild, maybe take it in from it.

Yeah. I know that people at like reptile shows and stuff will often have some mantises that you could get as a pet. You can always google places that might ship at pet mantises if they do like exotic species, but I myself as someone who's kept a lot of exotic mantises in my past, and I still do. But I've really, I've been really just astounded and had a

Oh, what about your favorite thing about them? Your favorite thing about being a scientist in this field?

Oh, I'll answer has two parts. So my favorite thing about mantis's, I think is just there by like how diverse they are in terms of their behavior and morphology and their life history. So being able to keep them and learn new things about them as they watch them develop and grow is always really exciting because then I can sort of when I go into the field, then I can piece that to my sampling, and that can

Would you have any advice for, like, anyone else who wants to get into this field. If someone's like I want to.

Do that, Yeah, I mean I would say, if for science, just find something that you're really passionate about. I think that's the thing that really helped me be able to stick with Mantiss, because there was actually a point where I was concer not continuing with them, at least temporarily, just because it was hard to find positions. But I just kept kept trying to stick with it, and you know,

That's such great advice, Like literally everyone planet, not just researchs.

I know several people want to know personally, your favorite mantis looking at you, Sarah Metzker and other promanted folks including Nina eve See, Felipa, jim and Is, Susan Singley, and Valerie Bertha, who asked favorite one. I know that's hard, Oh yeah, but yeah, like, is there one that is that is your secret favorite?

Yeah, so it's hard to choose between twenty five hundred of your favorite kids. But yeah, my favorite mantis is in that genus. It's a Toxidera bay are i, So that's the moss dragon mantis. There's a lot of cool species in that genus. There's one that looks like a flower, for example, but I just always thought that that species, in particular, Toxidera bay are i, just really encapsulated that draconic look to me, and the mossy protrusions and coloration

Have you ever had one?

No?

Unfortunately not. I wish if I. I mean, that's one of the mantises that I hope to see in the wild at some point in my career because they're just very, very special. They're really restricted to highland ranges in Southeast Asia. So of course with the climate change and have tut destruction,

Do you have any plans at some point to go to that region get your hiking booths on?

Oh?

I would love to. I've been really fortunate that in my career I've been able to go to a couple different places. So I've been to Belize and more recently I went to South America and went to Guyana. I haven't been collecting in Asia yet. I've gone back to visit India, and you know, when I was younger and have found the odd mantis and stuff, but never for a scientific expedition, and so I'd be really really excited to go to Malaysia or Thailand and collect because yes, super exciting.

Yeah, and how can people find you in general to keep following your work or to invite you on amantis?

I will. I will join any safari in general, but a safari especially, so I'm definitely on board. You can. My instagram is just at mantodiology. I guess that'll be the title of the episode anyway, So be easy and you'll find all my updates and stuff on there. I usually try to post macro photography as well as research updates on what I'm doing, and just stuff about mantises. So if you're interested in any of those things, you are welcome to join and chat and take what you will.

I love your account.

Thank you.

As soon as soon as I saw something from you, I was like, oh I Within like a minute, I was like, hey, are you available? You want to talk this weekend? What do you do tomorrow? Are you around tomorrow? What about the day after you said yes, I was so excited.

Oh, I was so excited. I was like, oh my god, it's the ologies. Tolly Ward.

So ask mantis people many questions, because have you ever loved a mantid more than you do?

Right now?

I'm gonna guess no. And for more on Lohite, you can find him of course on Instagram at Mentotiology, where he posts gorgeous photos and videos of mantids that are great to look at and also very educational, highly recommended, easy to find. It's just the title of this episode to handle mentodiology, and we are at ologies there and on x I'm on platforms everywhere, as Ali ward. You can find smologies so shorter, classroom friendly ologies episodes wherever

Is it hanging out on.

The screen door because it lost its leg in a valiant battle? Do we just have an awesome screen door. I don't know what's going on with it, and I haven't seen it in a few days, and that makes me sad. Also, in my office, I have so many spiders. I love every single one of them. I counted seven webs the last time around. You know what they eat for me? All kinds of books. I'm not in there with any raid, I'll tell you that much. I got spiders for that. I outsourced it.

I'm not pest. It's a buffet in there, and I wouldn't have it any other way anyway. So how to your bugs? Okay? I love them too?

By right, pack a germatology, they do zoology, lithology, no technology, meteorology, technology, ceriology, sinology.

We don't have to fight each other's heads off here get value.

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